


Bury Me in All My Favorite Colors

by Harlequinade



Series: The Story ends with the Good Guys...? [1]
Category: Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Baseball, Heartbreak, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 04:23:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4086676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harlequinade/pseuds/Harlequinade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Mikeyway and I are destined to be married.” Pete declared.<br/>Patrick smiled politely, trying to be happy for Pete. Really, he should be, and it was horrible of him to be jealous of Mikey. And he wasn’t jealous, he wasn’t. He just… kind of wanted Mikey Way to walk in front of a bus. God, Patrick was a horrible friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bury Me in All My Favorite Colors

A flying hug that almost took all the breath out of Patrick’s lungs announced Pete’s arrival. The older boy gave a smacking kiss to the side of Patrick’s face.

  
“Hey, Pete.” Patrick grinned, shoving the man off of him. Pete was a short twenty-two year old with black, emo-style hair and a love for awful fashion and invading personal space. For some reason he had attached himself to the high school junior Patrick, a short, rather chubby red haired seventeen year old with sideburns with a love for music and tolerance for Pete’s particular brand of affection.

  
The sight of his best friend made Patrick happier than he had been all day. Not that it was a bad day per say, but it hadn’t been the best either.

  
“How are you?” Patrick asked amiably.

  
“Patrick, I’m in love.” Pete declared dramatically.

  
Suddenly, the good feeling from being with Pete was gone, and placed with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach. “What?” It came out confused, but Patrick hoped he didn’t look like he was about to throw up.

  
“Mikeyway.” Pete sighed. “He likes Anthrax and Star Wars and believes in unicorns. I’m in love.” The short dark-haired boy was dangling his head off the park bench, feet high in the air as he talked.

  
“Are you serious?” Patrick almost laughed. “Mikey fucking Way?” Mikey Way was a strange senior with bird’s nest hair and glasses. He also had a… reputation.

  
“Yeah. Mikey Way.” Pete grinned. “I invited him to come along to that gig on Saturday. The Flower Children?”

  
Patrick swallowed the jealousy that threatened to overwhelm him and nodded, replying, “Oh.”

  
It sounded hoarse to him, but it was apparently unnoticed by Pete, who rearranged himself and sprawled across Patrick’s legs. Patrick shoved him off and onto the pavement, cheeks burning. “God, Pete.” He muttered.

  
“You love it.” Pete teased, giving Patrick a joking look. Patrick huffed, laughing quietly to himself. _Yeah, I do._

  
“So Trick,” Pete started. “I’m still trying to get Hurley to join Angeli, but he’s still playing on three other teams. Three!”

  
Pete was the captain of a neighborhood baseball team named Armus Angeli, and had recently met a hitter-slash-drummer named Andy Hurley that Pete had immediately begun to beg to be on his team. To be fair, most of the team was still in high school and hadn’t reached their physical peak yet, so having Hurley on the team would really help with bringing a few heavy hitters in.

  
“Pete, I hate to tell you this, but maybe Andy just doesn’t want to be on your team.” Patrick laughed, smoothing back his hair.

  
“Well, I’m not giving up!” Pete declared. “He is destined to be on the team. Just like Mikeyway and I are destined to be married.”

  
Patrick smiled politely, trying to be happy for Pete. Really, he should be, and it was horrible of him to be jealous of Mikey. And he wasn’t jealous, he wasn’t. He just… kind of wanted Mikey Way to walk in front of a bus. God, Patrick was a horrible friend.

  
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  
The Flower Children were headlining, so there was a small local band playing when Patrick got there. He didn’t see Pete at first - the venue was small, crowded, and dark.

  
But then he heard “Trick! Trick!” coming from the direction of the door and turns to see Pete and a tall, slim figure coming in. Patrick goes back to the door and Pete bounces on his tip toes, looking excited. “Mikey, this is Patrick. Trick, meet Mikeyway.”

  
“Hi.” Mikey moved two fingers in greeting, almost completely monotone. He was wearing an Empire Strikes Back shirt, tight skinny jeans, and a beanie with his black and white glasses. His brunette hair was almost plastered to his forehead and his jawline was sharp enough to cut glass. And he’s totally Pete’s type, not to mention pretty hot. If Patrick’s being honest, he had tried to avoid ever seeing Mikey at school for the exact reason that Mikey makes everyone else around him look that much more unattractive.

“Hey.” Patrick nodded, trying not to feel bitter. “Nice to meet you.”

  
“So, like, have either of you ever heard Literally Black?” Pete asked, looking between both of them hopefully. “‘Cause they’ve got a violinist and that could go really badly.”

  
“There’s also a piano on stage.” Patrick pointed out. “I’m betting that they know what they’re doing if they take the chance with those kind of instruments.”

  
“Gerard, my brother,” Mikey clarified. “says they’re pretty good. They played at an art exhibit or something and totally got kicked out halfway through because they were playing a song called ‘Little Girl, Little Boy’ or something like that that was about both pedophilia and crossdressing.”

  
Patrick’s eyes widened. “And your brother still said they were good?”

  
Mikey shrugged. “It was a cover song, and the lead singer is like sixteen. He probably didn’t even get it.”

  
“You’re eighteen.” Patrick pointed out with great satisfaction. _Only a year older than me._  “You’re not that much older.”

  
“True. But do I know the mysteries of the universe yet? I didn’t when I was sixteen either.” Mikey shoved his glasses up higher, shrugging his thin shoulders.

  
Patrick was quiet, feeling chastised.

“But anyway, if they play as good as they look, I’m sure we’re in for a show.” Mikey continued.

  
And looking up on stage, yeah, almost every single person up there was almost unfairly attractive - especially the lead singer and the bassist. Even through the heavy 80’s hair metal makeup there was no doubt that there were some good looking people behind it.

  
“Forner!” The singer yelled in a voice that took Patrick by surprise. The singer was slim, with long black hair like a lion’s mane and a girl’s features - the deep bass voice didn’t seem to really fit well with what its owner looked like.

  
The people in the crowd politely yelled and clapped for their home town, as the drummer started in with a loud drum beats and the guitarist gave them a tight metal strum. The singer screamed into the mike as a congregation of moshers took the opportunity.

  
Everything started to happen at once. The violinist started to play a fast, hard, and punishing riff as Pete grabbed Mikey’s hand.

  
The two vanished before Patrick could even tie his shoe lace - which had come untied. It was like a wave had just rose up and swallowed them whole.

  
The lights in the venue were dim, and it was hard to see even the band on stage (though that may have had more to do with the amount of black they were wearing than due to the dimness of the stage), so Patrick waded carefully into the crowd, shoulders hunched in an effort to keep from being hit by any of the moshers or really anyone around him.

  
Of course he got shoved around anyway, and the floor turned out to be sticky with god-knows-what (Patrick certainly didn’t want to know). Patrick got up, looking around, but still didn’t see Pete or Mikey anywhere. Maybe they were up near the barricade.

  
But after experiencing a press of sweaty limbs and a flying fist to the rib cage, Patrick decided to just wait in the back of the venue. He watched as the young frontman stalked around on stage, screaming poetry into the faces of the audience and licking a stripe up the bassist’s cheek.

  
Literally Black’s name was certainly accurate - they were all wearing black leather and had dyed black hair with makeup like KISS. But they had potential. The lyrics were good, the violinist-slash-pianist was certainly talented, as was the guitarist. The bassist was a bit mediocre, but Patrick could tell from the way he held the instrument that it wasn’t his first ‘language’. Probably he was originally a guitarist. The drummer was also very, very good, and seemed to be almost the life of the party, even from behind a kit.

  
Patrick took of his hat and smoothed back his sweaty hair. It was hot in the venue, and the amount of sweat and humidity in the air certainly wasn’t helping. He was breathing heavily - the air almost felt nonexistent because of how much water was in it.

  
He finally spotted Pete, but the sight in front of Patrick stopped the junior in his tracks. Mikey had his hands fisted in Pete’s collar and was kissing him. Pete wasn’t protesting; rather, he seemed to be encouraging Mikey. The shorter man had his arms around Mikey’s neck and suddenly really shoved his tongue down Mikey’s throat.

  
Patrick turned around and put his hat back on firmly, trying not to cry. He left without ever looking back and sat in his bedroom listening to Prince, ignoring Pete’s texts and calls asking where he had gotten to.

  
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  
The next Friday, Pete was playing a local baseball game, but they had managed to get the field with the huge bleachers. There was plenty of room for friends, parents, or girlfriends to watch. Patrick always went Pete’s baseball games, but when Pete mentioned that Mikey was coming, Patrick almost said no.

  
But of course, it was Pete, so he couldn’t. Patrick thought long and hard about what he could do, but there was only one solution he could think of. He could make it uninteresting enough that Mikey wouldn’t want to come back. There was no way to do that besides fixing the game in the other team’s favor.

  
Losing wouldn’t hurt Pete’s pride, that was for sure - Pete had no shame. So when Patrick went over to the baseball field, he brought his brother’s old balls. They were much heavier than regular balls and he was going to put them in the other team’s pitcher’s bag. Hopefully the Armus Angeli would be used to batting at lighter balls, so the heavier ones would lead to easier catches for the Verde Dias team because they would go shorter distances.

  
The day was hot and humid, and Patrick was sweating like crazy before he ever got to the field. When he got to the field, Pete and the others were already warming up, pitching to one another. Verdi Dias was stretching behind one of the bleachers, and Patrick watched them for a few moments before slinking into the shadows and down into the dugout.

  
In the shade it was cooler, but the humidity was still oppressive. Patrick swiped his face and began to search for the pitcher’s bag.

  
Looking around, Patrick spotted a backpack leaning up against the bench. He scooted over to it and unzipped it quietly. A sunscreen bottle and a bottle of water were the only things in the bag. He rezipped it and glanced over his shoulder. No telling when one of the players would come back for their drinks or a hat.

  
Spying a blue duffel underneath the bench, Patrick pulled it out and unzipped it, almost cheering when he saw it was filled with baseballs. Taking an armful of the balls out of the bag, he dumped the contents of his backpack into the duffel, zipped it shut, and pushed it back underneath the bleachers. Then he put all the lighter balls into his backpack and slunk back into the sunlight and area around the field.

  
Wiping his forehead with the back of his head and shading his face from the sun, Patrick spotted Mikey sitting on the very end of the highest bleacher, about twenty feet up. The brunette looked to be feeling warm as well, his forehead glittering and a sweatshirt sitting next to him, but for some reason wasn’t sweating through his shirt as Patrick was. Mikey was typing away on his Sidekick, glasses reflecting the sun painfully right at Patrick.

  
Scowling, Patrick climbed the bleachers on Verdi’s side halfway to the top and sat to the far right. There were tons of people already on the bleachers, and they all seem very self-absorbed, but soon quiet down when the teams both step onto the field.

  
Verdi Dias had quite a few older players; the best three were thirty. Twenty-two-year-old Pete and his gaggle of peers and slightly younger players looked quite inexperienced in comparison. But the Armus Angeli were good enough to at least put up a decent fight.

  
The first inning went pretty much as expected. Nobody got any runs and it was really kind of boring. Though Patrick could definitely tell that the heavier balls in the pitcher’s bag were throwing off Armus Angeli. The actual hits they got were a lot slower and many of the Angeli players were out before they even reached first base.

  
But from the second inning on until the fifth inning it was pretty obvious who was winning. For every one run Armus got, Dias got two. Soon, the Angeli began to catch onto the fact that they needed to hit harder, but even so the ball came at the players at a different speed from what they were expecting, so many got strikeouts.

  
It was only on the sixth inning that Pete finally got up to bat - he was one of the last players on the batting list, and the innings were ending before he had a chance to get up to the plate. Pete was definitely determined, and Patrick, wiping his face with the hem of his shirt, watched as Pete took his stance. Pete hit the first throw into the foul zone, but on the second… crack! The ball went flying into the outfield as the broken end of the bat flew up into the bleachers.

  
Pete took off running, as the outfielder threw to the second basemen, who tried to tag Pete as he flew past second, but the Dias player over compensated and fell when he tried to tag Pete. Pete made it to home and slid, getting to his feet and raising his hands in victory as Patrick and the others clapped and cheered for him.  
But suddenly, Pete’s arms dropped and his smile with it. Patrick’s heart leapt with fear as Pete’s eyes flashed the same. Then the man was running towards the exit to the field.

  
Patrick jumped up and picked his way down the bleachers, jumping off the last step as he caught sight of Pete rushing toward the obscured side of the Angeli stands. There was a crowd of people standing in the way, so Patrick couldn’t see what Pete was elbowing his way towards.

  
He followed, stopping with a jolt when he heard Pete asking fearfully, “Mikey? Mikey, can you hear me?”

  
Then Patrick ran, shoving his way through the crowd. On the ground near the stands was the limp body of Mikey Way. Pete was shaking him, his shoulders trembling with unshed tears and his voice wobbly from fear. “Wake up Mikes. C’mon, wake up.”

  
Somebody was talking rapidly. “I saw it. The bat hit him and he fell off the bleachers. There was this awful crack - I called the ambulance.”

  
But Patrick - and most of the other people there, he was sure - could see that there was no helping Mikey. His eyes were open and glassy, his glasses gone. His mouth was half open and slack. Pete wasn’t crying, but his whole demeanor was one of shock, so Patrick doubted that the tears would be unshed forever.

  
As Patrick heard the ambulance coming in the distance, sirens wailing and the whispers from the bystanders, asking “What happened?”, “Did someone get hurt?”, he closed his eyes. Pete was still frantically trying to wake Mikey up, and his voice cut right through Patrick.

  
“Mikey, baby, c’mon.” The pet name hit Patrick right in the gut like a sucker punch. He staggered backward, putting a hand over his mouth.

  
The ambulance arrived, but there wasn’t much they could do besides load Mikey into the emergency vehicle and drive him straight to the morgue. His neck snapped, an EMT said. He reassured them that Mikey’s death had been quick, but Patrick noticed that he didn’t say painless.

  
The crowd began to disperse as the EMTs and the ambulance left, until only Patrick and a shell-shocked Pete were sitting alone. Patrick was left thinking, What have I done?, as Pete finally began to cry, first silently, then harder, until he was sobbing in the hot sun on the searing metal benches as Patrick tried not to listen to Pete’s heartbreak.

  
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  
It was another hot day in the late spring when Mikey’s funeral took place. The wake was at his family’s church (though only his grandparents ever went there regularly), and Patrick nearly didn’t go to that either. But when Pete had met him at school with red eyes and a wrecked voice, saying “I can’t go there alone.”, Patrick caved.

  
Now he stood, watching as they lowered Mikey’s coffin into the ground and hoping the weight on his shoulders wasn’t obvious to anyone around him.  
Pete had smoothed his hair and was wearing a suit that made him look more somber than Patrick had ever seen him, and he wasn’t the only one.

  
Mikey’s older brother Gerard was helping lower the casket, long black hair swept across his face by the strong wind. He hadn’t cried during the wake, but it was obvious that he hadn’t been sleeping - his skin was bone white and almost glowed in the strong sun, and there were dark circles under his eyes.  
Besides Gerard, Mikey’s father was helping lower it in as well. Two of Mikey’s closest friends were also helping.

  
The first was Frank Iero, a punk kid with even more psychotic energy then Pete, though right now his face was still and his arms steady as he let the coffin down. His black mohawk was tamed and carefully arranged, and he was wearing a black suit and a fedora that should have blown off in the gusts of wind.

  
The second was a college-age kid named Ray Toro, who was also sporting a hat that did little to contain his brown curly hair that was basically an afro. His features were like stone, and was methodically putting one hand over the other as they put the boy to rest.

  
The first scoop of dirt onto the coffin lid spiked another pain in Patrick’s heart, and he gripped Pete’s hand tightly, watching. He had done this. He had killed an eighteen-year-old kid because he had been jealous. He didn’t know whether this pain would ever go away, and Patrick didn’t know whether he deserved to have this pain lessened.

  
Finally, the gravestone was set in place and Pete set down the rose he brought - a black one with drops of red like blood in the petals.

  
Others came over and put their gifts by the headstone, and Gerard brought to bouquets of red, sweet-smelling flowers and laid them there. For a second he just knelt, unmoving, before suddenly turning and running off. Patrick was sure there were tear tracks on Gerard’s face, but he hadn’t seen very clearly.

  
Pete was still looking at the gravestone.

  
_Michael James Way._  
_September 10, 1996 - May 13, 2015._  
_“Remember to carry on.” -Unknown_

  
Patrick’s heart clenched when Pete started to sob, kneeling in the fresh dirt and touching the letters etched into the rock with one hand.

  
“Why?” He asked through the tears. “Why did he have to die?”

  
Patrick shook his head, not trusting his voice. He put a hand on Pete’s shoulder and watched the older man pour out his anguish like blood gushed out of a wound.


End file.
